Nearest Distant Shore
by TealEyed-Quatre
Summary: Zim disappeared before the boys started hi-skool and Dib lives alone, having abandoned all interest in the paranormal after the loss of his eternal rival. So what on Irk could ever bring them back together again? Warnings inside.
1. Thinkin' About You

A/N: Okay, monsters. This is my first Invader Zim piece. So… Feel free to review, just try not to be too harsh, okay? I take criticism well, but not flames. My story title is the song "Nearest Distant Shore" by Trisha Yearwood and my chapter titles will come from various sources.

Disclaimer: I don't own Invader Zim or the characters, and I don't own the song titles or lyrics. This is a blanket disclaimer for the rest of the fanfiction.

Thank you so much for reading this!!!!

Warnings: Angst, violence, depression, SLASH… More in later chapters.

Chapter One: Thinkin' About You

Rain poured down on the small apartment complex in torrents, the rivulets streaming down the glass, illuminated by the muted television. Dib sat silently on his dilapidated old couch, watching the figures move across the screen without really seeing them.

His thoughts were elsewhere. His mind had drifted to memories of middle skool- Zim in particular- hours ago, just as it always did when he attempted any potentially mind-numbing activity.

The alien had dropped off the grid just before they were to start hi-skool, much to Dib's conflicting joy and dismay. He had gone to Zim's base for answers, and found it dark and motionless, without any sign of life. However, his attempts to enter proved that the defense systems were still running, even if nothing else was.

He'd gone home disappointing, returning again and again only for the same results. Finally, after months of monitoring and fruitless hacking, Dib gave up.

Interests in paranormal studies successfully curbed, he turned his attention to "real science"-much to his father's jubilation. But it just didn't hold the spark, the fire, which his paranormal research always had.

Nonetheless, he persisted, and at seventeen, Dib was well on his way to graduation and higher education. He'd asked his father to lease an apartment on his sixteenth birthday, having been driven to distraction by the memories contained in his family home.

So here he was- alone in an apartment with no friends to speak of and a family that didn't care.

With a heavy sigh, he grasped the remote and turned off the television, pausing for a moment to revel in the complete, pitch-black silence only broken by the sound of the rain. Then he levered himself off the couch and trudged into the bedroom, where the analog clock read two A.M. in glowing red numbers.

He dragged his tee shirt over his head and dropped it carelessly onto a pile of laundry waiting to be washed. It felt as if his limbs were weighted with lead, fingers stiff as he fumbled with the button of his dark jeans. When he finally got it undone and lowered the zipper, Dib just kicked them off and shuffled forwards to fall into bed.

He didn't make it that far.

The doorbell chimed, echoing through the apartment in such a way that it even drowned out the sound of the rain. It seemed so defining a moment that he shivered, the fine hair on the back of his neck standing straight up as he stood, mostly-naked, in his bedroom.

The second chime jerked him into motion and he stalked, irritated, from the bedroom and through the kitchen to the metal security door. He grabbed his customary trench coat on his way out and shrugged into it, holding it closed to create an illusion of modesty. The chair was unclipped and the bolt unlatched, the door open within seconds of him reaching it.

A small, plain man stood at the threshold, right hand raised to press the bell again. He blinked stupidly for a moment before retracting the offending limb and grinning up at Dib in a sheepish manner.

"Um… I'm sorry to intrude. I was wondering if you'd let me stay the night. They're fumigating my house for roaches…"

Dib's stomach lurched, but he took a steadying breath and cleared his expression.

"Why me, Kyle? And why now? It's after two in the morning!"

Kyle averted his eyes and shifted his weight nervously.

"Well, we work together… And no one else would let me stay… Please! It's just for tonight, and then I'll go find someplace else!"

He dropped his bag to clasp his hands in a pleading motion, seemingly desperate.

Dib rolled his eyes. "And I wonder why…" he mumbled under his breath. Then he cleared his throat and said loudly, "Fine. But just for tonight, on the couch. You better be gone before I leave in the morning."

Kyle grinned and shouldered Dib aside, lumbering into his home with all the grace and charm of a grizzly bear. Dib growled, but shut and locked the door behind them before going to find his uninvited guest.

He found Kyle in the living room, fingering the remote control where he'd left it on the way to bed.

"You've got quite the pad for a teenager. And such a large TV!" the small man exclaimed. "How'd you afford all of this?!"

Dib growled again, louder.

"Why is your couch so lumpy? I mean, the TV is great and the kitchen is nice and the walls are painted, so why such an ugly couch?"

"Would you like a drink?" Dib ground out. He needed the man to shut up before he did something he would regret.

"Why yes, thanks! Do you have any beer?" Kyle beamed at him, oblivious to the murder taking place behind his host's eyes.

"No. I have poop soda."

"Oh, okay. I suppose that's fine, then."

"You suppose, do you?" Dib muttered as he stalked into the kitchen. "Of course, I suppose it would be bad if I just strangled you and hid the body…"

He yanked the refrigerator door open and made a mental note to stop at the grocery store on the way home from school the next day. Grabbing a can without looking, he kicked the door shut and headed back into the living room, where he deposited it on the coffee table.

His guest was buried head first in the hall closet, and Dib wrapped his fingers in his shirt collar to pull him out, dumping him unceremoniously on the carpet.

"Stay out of my stuff if you don't want me to kick you out."

Dib pushed Kyle out of the way and pulled a couple of spare blankets from the shelf, slamming the closet door shut with a resounding bang. He stomped over to the couch and quickly created a makeshift bed on the lumpy cushions.

When he looked up, Kyle was standing behind the couch with a small stack of manila folders in his hands. A grotesque, mocking grin had spread across his face.

"_You're_ the Dib that was insane in middle skool!" he exclaimed, waving the folders. "It was in all the newspapers! Chickenfoot, Yeti, Count Chocula!"

Red dripped across Dib's vision. "Get out!" he shouted. "Out, now!"

He unlocked the front door and threw it open, then tossed Kyle's bag out into the hall. The other just stood, mouth hanging open, and Dib had had enough.

"GET OUT!!" he roared.

Kyle was out the door and it was shut and locked before Dib's mind caught up with what was happening. He leaned against the door, anger fading as he let his breathing slow. _God, could it get any worse?_

The steady staccato of the rain on the windows continued, unaffected.


	2. In the Light

A/N: Second Chapter. My version of the Irken dialect is Gaelic, pulled straight from a dictionary and butchered to suit my purposes.

Warnings: See first chapter.

Disclaimer: I don't own the song title "In the Light" or Invader Zim.

In the Light

Dib was woken by the unpleasant, blaring sound of his alarm clock, proudly declaring the time as six A.M. and time to be getting ready for another beautiful Tuesday.

He groaned loudly and rolled over to turn it off, only to come crashing to the floor when he misjudged the width of the bed. Cursing, he untangled the sheets from his legs and reclaimed a seat on the edge of the bed. He slapped the off button and just rubbed his eyes for a moment, brushing the sleep-crust from the corners of his lids.

_What a night._

He'd cleared away the mess that Kyle had left in his wake earlier that morning, folding blankets and stashing the manila folders back in the small box where he hid them. Too many memories, mostly unpleasant- and even the pleasant ones, he had no wish to recall.

One way or another, it all led back to Zim.

With a sigh, Dib heaved himself off the bed and forced his tired limbs to carry him to the open closet, where he grasped the first clean set of clothing he saw. From there he trudged despondently to the tiny bathroom.

He set the water on lukewarm (he didn't want to fall asleep) and scrubbed his body clean quickly and efficiently before turning his attention to his hair.

The thick black mass took nearly ten minutes to wash, dirt clinging like limpets to his skull as he scoured the surface with his blunt fingernails. Once he felt it was clean enough, he turned off the water and reached for a towel, ringing out his hair and then wrapping it so it would dry faster.

The mirror was fogged over, so he swiped at it with a hand towel in order to peer tiredly at his blurry reflection. Blue-black rings encircled his gold eyes and there were worry lines etched between his brows. He felt as though he'd aged tremendously in the few short years since he'd started hi-skool.

Dib just felt… empty. So much of his life had revolved around Zim and stopping Zim's plans for world domination, and now all of it was gone. He had no real purpose, none save surviving another day to put his intelligence at his father's rather dubious disposal.

And it would have happened the same way with or without Zim's presence, he admitted to himself as he brushed his teeth. He would have eventually given up the paranormal and become another of his father's lab assistants. He might not have liked it, but he would let it happen. What else could he do?

After dressing and shoving a piece of SUPER!Toast in his mouth, Dib grabbed his messenger bag and began the long walk to skool.

LINEBREAK

On the other side of town from where Dib was making his way down the street, the Irken in question was just rising from the depths of sleep in his dark home.

The air was cool and stagnant, tinged with must from lingering moisture. He shivered as he disconnected the power cords from his back, cringing as the sound echoed through the empty room.

That was a sure sign of how bad it was, how bad it had been for the four Earth years since he'd stopped attending the human education system. His pak, which normally controlled his body temperature, growth, and maintained his nutritional intake, was failing.

Growth regulation had been the first to go, as evidenced by his new height of five foot three (in the human scale). Here on Earth, it was far below average… On Irk, he would have moved into the Elite range and perhaps even become competition for the next Tallest…

_The Tallest…_

It was his fault, admittedly, for being such an obvious defect. He should have known- honestly, he _had_ known what they and the rest of the Irken race thought of him. He'd just been too busy drowning in the Nile, as the humans said, to acknowledge it. Too busy trying to prove to himself and them something that was utterly impossible.

To speak truthfully, he was astonished that they'd let it last so long. Perhaps he was just _aichad;_ entertainment.

In any case, they'd called him right before he would have been entering the human equivalent of secondary education. They'd called and told him that it was all a _cahr_, a joke, a ruse. And then they'd remotely shut down all Irken technology in his base- even GIR. Even his pak.

Luckily, paks were designed to be self-sustaining; with life-long batteries- so long as there was Irken technology in the vicinity to feed off of. As it was, he'd barely survived long enough to adapt it to human power sources. He was very, very thankful that he'd had the insight to install human electricity in the base, even if he had only done so to further his cover.

Now, though, even that last resort was beginning to fail. Soon he would need to begin supplementing the nutrients from his pak with human food, and eventually the pak's only function would be life support. He would only live a fraction of an Irken's usual life span, though if he adapted quickly enough, he would live much longer than the average human.

Zim sighed wheezily and shoved himself up off the cold metal floor, shivering uncontrollably. With great effort, he managed to find a moth-eaten trench coat among the detritus scattered across the room. The Irken shrugged it on, shuddering as the material chafed his raw skin.

His pak clicked and whirred, straining to conserve its last remnants of energy. The knowledge pounded in time with the blood in his temples, eclipsing every other thought.

_I'm dying. _

_Codag, I'm dying. _

With one last defiant growl, Zim stumbled out the front door and down the walk.

_I will __**not**__ give up!_ He thought angrily. Even if it meant asking that _stupid_ human for help.

LINEBREAK

In a small chair at the back of an eleventh grade classroom, Gaz Membrane lifted her purple head to stare into the distance. She remained that way, frozen, for a long moment before digging her phone from the pocket of her dress.

Her idiot brother's life was about to be turned upside-down… And as funny as that was, it would be better for everyone involved if he had a little warning.

With an angry huff, she opened a new message.

"_Hey, stupid. You might want to skip skool today…"_

End Chapter.

A/N: Okay. "Codag" is an edited version of the Gaelic word for war. He's the god Irkens used to worship, before everything went technological and the Control Brains took over. You'll hear a lot more about him later. I know that this chapter's more than a little disjointed, but it was written on a couple of different days at different times, so it's not going to flow well.

And yes, I know that their last name isn't Membrane. It's artistic license.

I hope you liked it!


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